STOP THIS TORTURE NOW

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OUTRAGE AT SERBIAN 'TREATMENT' OF PATIENTS WITH ADDICTIVE DISORDERS

Officials in Serbia are investigating a 'rehabilitation centre' affiliated to the Orthodox Church where drug addicts have been filmed being beaten.Vrememagazine shows a man appearing to assault a patient by hitting him with a shovel and punching his face.

Defending his organisation, Archpriest Branislav Peranovic told B92 television that "whoever has a junkie in the house knows what I am talking about." He gives no evidence of knowing that addiction is a medical disorder, stemming from dysregulation of the brain's mesolimbic dopamine system, nor that he has read the well-proven effective treatments for it.

In the video posted on Vreme's website on Friday, a young man believed to be a patient at the Crna Reka rehabilitation centre is seen being beaten repeatedly with a shovel, and then punched and kicked in the head by two men in sports gear. The incident takes place in a room displaying Christian icons.

The centre said the beatings, administered by former addicts, were a necessary part of the therapy for drug addiction and were carried out with the consent of patients' parents.

A former patient said that sometimes they would be told to form a circle around a "bad one" and watch them being beaten by the priests and other staff. "They would hit him with clubs, shovels, fists, bars, belts, whatever they got their hands on," he told Vreme. Archpriest Peranovic "knows how to hit – his hands are often bloody… he practises martial arts".

Government human rights monitor Sasa Jankovic plans to file torture charges against the facility: "It is no therapy. It is a criminal act". Addiction Today strongly supports his statement.